On the Way

Audrey Moshier

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 09:46:04 GMT

So like, there's this movie called Dallas 362 that I saw a few years back. It was written and directed by Scott Caan who I like a lot. It had this song, featured without vocals in the trailer, called The Long Goodbye with music by Blues Saraceno and vocals by Audrey Moshier.

I looked for this song for like a million years because I loved it. I used to find one or two songs per movie that I liked a lot before I really got into music. Most of the music I listened to functioned primarily as reference to movies I liked, or TV shows sometimes. Each song would remind me of the part of the movie featuring it, stuff like that.

Anyway, I was thinking about this movie after watching Nowhere which had Scott Caan in it (maybe one of his earliest roles?). I ventured over to IMDB and browsed through the umpteen threads discussing the soundtrack and particularly The Long Goodbye. I suddenly remembered my dormant quest to find the song and wondered if there was anything I could do. I tried P2P and torrents, yet again, and couldn't find anything. I thought about using Amazon or Ebay but I'm broke so I resisted that.

Then I thought about myspace which I haven't used in forever. So I mosied over there and looked her up. Sure enough, she has like six profiles which are all different bands she's belonged to over the years. On her main page, there was the song. I listened to it like 8 times and was miffed that I couldn't download it. I added it to my myspace and then sort of forgot about it for a few hours.

Then something clicked and I felt stupid for not thinking about it earlier. I decided to message her, feeling silly the whole time I typed and even getting a twinge of dread as I hit "send". The next day, she messaged me back offering to send me the song on a burnt CD.

We've messaged each other a couple of times, and eventually decided to use email to get me the song. Now I have it, finally, 3 years after seeing the movie, and it is glorious. Moreover, I've checked out all her other music and it's fucking awesome.

I didn't really expect her to answer me, and felt like a creep for even trying. I mean, how many weirdo fans do musicians have anyway? But her coolness and how down to earth she is completely impress me and have turned me into a big fan. She even seems vulnerable, a little, since she doesn't seem to consider herself very successful as she has no record deals.

She has done music, with The Ethers and Wifey, for many movies including Valentine, Scarface, Pulp Fiction, True Romance, and Reservoir Dogs.

This is kind of a shoutout for her, in hopes that some people might check her out. Spreading the word, right?

You can find her by searching for Audrey Moshier on myspace. Her page contains several links to different projects she's associated with, most of which she's done vocals for. She's a very talented, and amazingly versatile vocalist. I hope you dig her stuff as much as I did.

Movie Diary: Cloverfield

Sat, 19 Jan 2008 21:17:14 GMT

The Players:

No one famous. And anyway, they all die?

The Plot:

A yuppie in Manhattan is moving to Japan for a great new job and his pretty friends throw him a party in his posh, humongous apartment. Drama ensues when a girl he's liked for a while and hooked up with one time shows up with a new beau.

Before the drama can be reconciled and this can turn into a movie where Rob either convinces Beth to come to Japan with him, or decides to stay out of love, a giant fucking monster rises up out of the ocean and starts fucking shit up.

Since Beth is trapped in her own ridiculous NYC property, and chaos is surging all around as the National Guard try to fight off El Monstero, Rob elects to travel across the island to find Beth and drag her ass out o' da shit.

The Lowdown:

First let's deal with the obvious issues people are going to have with this movie:

1. The characters are dumb and unrealistic, they behave in stupid and unbelievable ways.

Well, sir, don't you know pretty, successful people who have parties and get invested in drama with friends and love interests? I do. I don't know powerful, rich-kids from NYC, but I figure rich kids who like parties are the same everywhere. The characters seem realistic enough for me, and they're all drunk for half the movie so if you feel like they're being dicks all the time or saying dumb shit, this is probably part of the reason.

The way they behave in the face of disaster is actually understandable. Most people would run away, sure. But most people would have an urge to go somewhere to save someone, many people reported this urge on 9/11 and a lot of people actually did make their way to NYC to help in whatever way they could. Rob, because he's been through so much traumatic shit in such a short time, behaves in an unusual, but not unreasonable manner. If your concern is that his friends follow him, you obviously don't have much sense of how people try to stick together above all else in a crisis.

2. The ending sucks. They don't explain anything.

Who cares? There's enough circumstantial evidence, mostly in small easy-to-miss shots to hint at the origin of yon Beastie. As for why it's there or where it comes from, are these things really important or the business of our protagonists? If this were a movie about the world reacting to a giant monster attack, it might contain details about this if only because someone, somewhere would be working like ass to find out.

The ending doesn't suck. It's pretty clear what happens to Beth and Rob and the monster. We get a conclusion to the story we've been following. We even get a tentative conclusion to the overarching threat that is the monster. If you wanted Rob to drop hand grenades into it's orifices, you're watching the wrong kind of movie. Rob is a regular guy, not a monster-fighter. And his becoming a monster-fighter through circumstance is not the movie that Cloverfield is trying to be. Not that it wouldn't be a cool movie on its own.

Anyway. On to what's good about the movie, but first a small warning:

Cloverfield will cause motion sickness if you sit too close to the screen. If you read this before going, please do yourself a favor and sit as far up as you can. I do not get motion sickness and didn't even know it for that as I watched the movie, so if you feel like you can handle it be safe instead of sorry. The theatre likely won't give your money back.

Anyway, one of the best things about Cloverfield is its effectiveness in placing you in the middle of this horrific situation. Instead of being cheesy or nonthreatening, the monster is actually pretty fucking terrifying and definitely dangerous. You get great sense of the damage it can wreak in several scenes, though always with a sense of how much would be too much to reveal. They keep the thing off focus and largely obscured most of the movie, until our heroes finally get to high ground and get a much better, and for us much more satisfying, look at it. And it holds up. In fact, it looks fucking awesome. The anatomy is strange, the size is mind-boggling, and the little parasites it drops off its hide are somehow as frightening in their own way as it is.

So as a "giant monster movie", Cloverfield utterly succeeds. It's better than any of the Godzillas I've seen, because you do feel like you're there. The characters might be thinly drawn and sometimes hard to support because you wouldn't do what they do, but you can go along with them for the ride and a few small, understated, but highly emotional and involving scenes definitely put you into sympathy for them, not as individuals you know and love, but as people in general who were just trying to have fun and live life before this terrible shit started happening to them.

As far as bad things, well, I think that Cloverfield should have been just a little bit longer. At 74 minutes, a sizable chunk of which is the party which is not as interesting as the disaster, it's maybe the shortest "feature film" I've ever watched. It is certainly the shortest film I've ever caught in theatres. The problem with this criticism is that I don't know what they would have done with the extra time. Spend a little longer with the military or the temporary hospital, maybe? Both would have been fine, and I'd actually have preferred the latter given what happens to the punk chick from Mean Girls in there.

Also, there are a few wasted opportunities to give the audience a greater feeling of resolution in the end. The ending doesn't suck, it's fine, but it isn't as concrete as it could have been. Letting us know for sure, at least, that Manhattan had been nuked by showing a mushroom cloud would have had the simultaneous effect of assuring us that this is what happens, more it would be a great visual shout out to the origin of giant monster movies. You don't have to tell people that the monster is dead by showing such a thing. Maybe it's impervious to nukes?

Beyond that, there's only my need to know EVERYTHING about the background of this story. I want to know where the thing comes from, what the fuck is up with it, what the bite of the little guys causes, what the hell they are, what happens to NYC in the end (although there are firm hints), whether or not there are more monsters, etc etc.

But like, what can you do?

Movie Diary: In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale

Thu, 17 Jan 2008 05:23:00 GMT

The Players:

Jason Statham, Leelee Sobieski, Claire Forlani, Burt Reynolds, John Rhys-Davies, Ray Liotta, Ron Perlman, Kristanna Loken, and Matthew Lillard.

The Plot:

A guy named Farmer is forced to confront an evil, exiled sorceror after said sorceror uses his low-rent Krug (orcs, basically) to kill and scatter the folk of a kingdom called Ehb.

Along the way he encounters wizards, black guys with swords, old king Konreid and his army, as well as Cirque du Soleile.

The Lowdown:

This is an Uwe Boll movie. Uwe Boll is a crazed German filmmaker who basically makes really awful videogame movies.

After seeing the cast he put together for this one, I had to go see it. And I was not let down. This is one of the dumbest movies you'll ever see and it revels in its own stupidity as it rips off Lord of the Rings with each breath.

Some of the cast look bored, staggering their way through the movie much as Michael Madsen did in Bloodrayne (his being drunk all the time probably helped). The others actually rise to the material, playing straight and acting as if they're actually in something that can legitimately be called a film.

One of the scariest things about this is that Uwe Boll has actually developed as a filmmaker. His grasp of narrative, editing, dialogue, and actually directing actors still leaves a lot to be desired, but there are some truly nice shots in Dungeon Siege. The fight choreography actually isn't that bad either, though it's woefully out of place in a movie like this.

This flick even has a lot of funny shit. Lines and moments so bad you'll wonder why you didn't get drunk first. But if you go into it knowing what you're in for, you'll come out having had a great time.

I had an awesome time. This is truly an example of "so bad it's good".

The Best Part:

Where else are you going to see Jason Statham using his Transporter-style fighting skills against what look like extras in costumes from Beastmaster: The Series?

Or Ray Liotta dressed as Prince, laughing maniacally as he threatens people and fucks Leelee?

Or Matthew Lillard playing a deranged, gay version of Hamlet complete with bad accent?

The Best line:

Dying King Burt: "Wisdom is a hammer, goodness the nail."

ARGH

Sun, 13 Jan 2008 11:28:58 GMT

ARGH!!!

Man. Fuck. How many posts have I written tonight? People will remember this as "that night Evan made a bunch of emotional posts because he was drunk". It's not that simple!!!!!!

Well, yeah. It is.

Halafajeegomastoopa

Sun, 13 Jan 2008 11:26:17 GMT

Well. My earlier post was clearly out of pure drunkeneness. Evan sucks. What does he know? Who cares what he thinks? No one, that's who.

MAN! I don't know. I need some kind of massive release. I feel like volcanoes and hurricanes must feel like before they wreak havoc on puny humans. Does this mean I should destroy houses and kill people? Like, property destruction is definitely tempting. Ultimately, too responsible for that shit.

But what am I doing? Why be responsible? Ugh! UGH!!!

I wish I could put myself at ease. I can't. I'm burning from the inside out and there's not a fire extinguisher on this planet that can help.

Fuck. I feel melodramatic. I want everything I say or do to be riveting and life-altering for all who bear witness. Too bad I'm such an average joe.

AND I'D BE NORMAL IF I WEREN'T DRUNK. But even normal isn't really normal. I play nice because people expect me to be a bit off, but more or less okay. I'm not okay. I'm not okay. I'm better and worse. Life... I don't even know. Life feels so inexplicable. There are rules, aren't there?

WHY!?

Melodrama, maybe. Ugh. I wish I could stop feeling like I feel, this way I just can't quite describe.

Movie Diary: The Best of 2007

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 09:03:24 GMT

And this is my list of the best movies of 2007. Last year will go down as one of the best years for movies in a long, long time. It was also the year I got my fullest complement of the biggest and best, having made it out to see pretty much everything worth seeing except for those stubborn ones that were not on my radar until too late, or simply didn't come out here as yet.

Since 2007 was so good, I found myself tempted to broaden the list to a Top 20. However, the structure of 15 movies is the best, I think, so I've settled (and so will you) for a large Honorable Mentions section.

In any other year, even last year, most of the movies in Honorable Mentions would have made my Top 15. And just as in the last two years, this list will probably not reflect my feelings as time goes on and I grow to appreciate some movies more than others, and forget about the ones that seemed great but didn't have real lasting power. I look at my 2006 list, for instance, and cringe. I only got a few spots right on that one, I think now.

But hindsight is 20/20 and this list should have been posted two weeks ago as is. Have at it:

15. Bug

The best psychological horror movie I've ever seen, maybe. I dunno, that could be saying too much. It's really fucking good, though. Will get right under your skin and stay there. Trust me.

14. The Bourne Ultimatum

Best action movie of 2007. The best of the trilogy, something that doesn't usually happen at the end. And, uh... MATT DA-MON!

13. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

Managed to squeeze this one on here. This would have rated much higher in any other year. The performances are just riveting. It's such a bleak fucking movie, ye gods.

12. Eastern Promises

Viggo+Cronenberg=guaranteed spot. Back when I first saw this, I thought it would be top 5 for sure. Eastern Promises is not quite as good as A History of Violence, though. I guess maybe top 10 would be more realistic. But, forget it... it's 2007.

11. Fido

Such a pleasant, ridiculous surprise. I'd have bought this ages ago if it weren't so horrendously expensive. Limited print DVDs... no wonder people fucking download. Viscious cycle.

10. The Kingdom

The Kingdom is really, really good. Right? I mean, it's not only candid and smart about topical international issues, it has a kickass buddy-cop/police procedural built in. Not to mention one of the best daylight shootouts ever. And Jamie Foxx.

9. Superbad

I really wish I could put this one up higher. But as I've said before, I'm less interested in comedy and tend to gravitate more towards seriouser shit. So comedies are always the first to get knocked down pegs by "better" films. If this were a favorites list and not an objective-as-possible BEST OF, Superbad probably would merit a higher spot. Top 5?

8.Grindhouse

It's almost hard to put this on here because Grindhouse, the experience, is probably a thing I'll tell stories about for the next couple of decades and no one will know what I mean. Unless they release the features together in one package, with the trailers dividing them, it's not really the same is it? I don't have the heart to choose Death Proof over Planet Terror or vice versa. I love both and they complement each other so well in this "experience" that to separate them is beyond me. And in case I'm not sounding like a broken record yet, Grindhouse would DEFINITELY have made my TOP 5 in a lesser year. Fucking yes.

7. Sunshine

In a year notable for its few decent "genre" flicks, Sunshine stands out. I love this movie a lot, and it probably should be in the Top 5 on the power of my awe and love alone. But there were greater masterpieces in 2007, alas. Sunshine, here's to you.

6. Into the Wild

Another heartbreaker. I probably like Into the Wild better than No Country and to put this one in the #6 spot is really hard for me to do. But when I copy/paste No Country into #6 there's this little voice, this compulsion to put it back in the spot it deserves. Sorry Sean Penn, but I can't be sad for long. I will soon own all of you on DVD. On my DVD shelf, there is no heirarchy. You will all be equal. Take solace in that.

5. No Country for Old Men

I was ambivalent toward it on my first viewing. My second one hammered it home as one of the masterpieces among masterpieces of this year. No Country for Old Men deserves top accolades. Most people would probably agree with a great deal of my list, and yet put No Country in the number one spot. And it's tempting.

4. The Mist

The Mist is sort of the sleeper movie of 2007. Most people are assuming it's another terrible Stephen King horror movie. Only people in the know understand that what it is is far more than that. Probably the best broad social commentary, with none of the pretention of Shymalan, this year, The Mist elevates itself among its peers for its sheer willingness to take risks. In a ball comparison contest between The Mist and No Country, I'm honestly not sure who would win. That's why The Mist is number four, baby. It will probably be an unpopular choice, though.

3. Once

Once is the most likable movie of 2007. People have to like this movie. It's got so much heart that it fills my TOP 15 list with blood and warmth and unrequited love. In a cinematic year of such bleakness, only a couple of really warm movies have managed to counterbalance the dark and spare me from suicide. Once is foremost among them. It's the trickiest movie on this list because even now I want it to be #1 or at least #2. But I know that in time, my love will wane and the absolute craftsmanship and daring-do of the next two flicks earn them their rank.

2. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

I was sure, upon walking out of this, that I'd seen the best movie of 2007. In a nearby screen, they were playing Gone Baby Gone. I went home and watched the trailer and I wondered... wondered if Casey Affleck really had it in him. Jesse James is the kind of movie that's made for BEST OF lists. But it's relatively undiscovered amongst the general public. In a few years, when people are talking about it and it has numerous editions on DVD (there are supposedly four or five different cuts) I can say I was there at the beginning. I like saying that.

1. Gone Baby Gone

Maybe a bit of a cheat, Gone Baby Gone was able to take me to a place that was kind of like a car crash. Because I could relate to some of the themes on a personal level, much less the driving issues of the plot, I feel like Gone Baby Gone might have tricked me into thinking it's a better movie than it is. But I don't think so. It's rare that you watch a movie that makes you question your moral sureties so thoroughly. I'd gotten used to being subverted slightly in Battlestar Galactica, finding myself sympathizing for people and acts I'd never condone, or never thought I would. Gone Baby Gone takes that kind of skeptical subversion and accelerates it, building it steadily over the course of the film until it crushes down on you like the weight of the world. A little girl's world, someone who can't take care of themselves so you can't even excuse yourself by telling yourself that they can and it's not your fault. That's a tough thing to have on your shoulders, even for a moment. And while the twists and the colorful characters might trick people, that little girl is the beating heart of the movie. What it's all about. How can it not be my number one?

Honorable Mentions

(Much smaller list than I thought)

Stardust
Charlie Wilson's War
Wristcutters: A Love Story
Juno
American Gangster
Reign Over Me
Knocked Up
Rescue Dawn
Hot Fuzz
Zodiac
Smokin' Aces
Transformers
Pirates 3

Wish I'd Seen

(Much bigger list than I thought)

There Will Be Blood
This Is England
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Atonement
Paris Je T'Aime
The Black Book
Youth Without Youth
Redacted
In the Valley of Elah
The Darjeeling Limited
Lars and the Real Girl
Control
Things We Lost in the Fire
Soutland Tales
I'm Not There
Away from Her
The Nines

Movie Diary: The Worst of 2007

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 08:19:05 GMT

Welcome to the worst fucking shit in 2007. Unfortunately for my wrath, 2007 was an amazing year for movies. Even the worst piles of cowpie aren't as bad as the worst piles of cowpie from lesser years. Or so I'm told.

As you know, I don't usually use this list to talk about movies which everyone knew were going to be fucking awful anyway. Instead, I usually concentrate on the biggest disappointments. This year has a few that are particularly painful and I hesitate to add to the list, even. But with this disclaimer, my conscience is clear!

Without further ado:

5. Spiderman 3

Spiderman 3 is a schizophrenic movie that completely destroyed my faith, which granted is largely due to Army of Darkness, in Sam Raimi. I hope Raimi goes to director jail and directs fucking credit card commercials for a few years.

If you've seen Spiderman 3, you know why it's bad. Not a bad movie, if taken apart and examined based on its pieces, but a disappointing ending to a pretty okay trilogy of movies. If I'd been doing this back when Spiderman 2 came out, you probably would have seen that on a list like this one. Hmm.

4. The Golden Compass

This movie was disappointing for sure. But It's up here, higher on the list, only because I didn't expect a whole hell of a lot in the first place. It's New Line, after all. They shit these youth fantasy movies like they just ate your grandma's chili.

The Golden Compass also deserves a slightly less precarious position on this list if only because it convinced New Line to stfu and make amends with PJ so that The Hobbit can finally be made. While The Golden Compass has probably ruined His Dark Materials (as potential movies) forever, it has at least bestowed on us a chance to see Middle Earth again.

3. I Am Legend

As many know, I have a lot of contempt for this movie. People will probably marvel that it isn't number two or number one on this list. The only reason why it isn't is that it has a ridiculously strong performance from Will Smith, and that the first half is almost as good as most of the GREAT movies of 2007. Of course, it all withers on the vine before long. Will Smith's redemptive qualities are also counterbalanced by just how much hope I had for this flick, which is why it's not number four or five. You're starting to figure out my thought process now, huh?

2. Shoot 'Em Up

Shoot 'Em Up must be one of the most simultaneously boring and violent movies ever made. Those two words should never go together in a description, by the way. Nuff said.

1. Pathfinder

This movie had a lot going for it. Vikings, aboriginals, CLANCY BROWN. How, how could they fuck this up so bad that I don't even want to see it again just for CLANCY? You might wonder how this hallowed spot, which once fit King Kong, could be kept for a movie so harmless. Well, for fuck's sake, you have to ask yourself how they fucked up King Kong, too... don't you? I have to this day not watched that load a second time.

And I may someday watch Pathfinder again.

Unrepentently Bad:

Hannibal Rising, The Number 23, Ghostrider, Live Free or Die Hard, Home of the Brave, 1408, The Invisible

Movie Diary: Juno

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 07:59:47 GMT

The Players:

Ellen Page, Michael Cera, Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman, JK Simmons.

The Plot:

A hip, irreverant teenage girl who is cooler than anyone you've ever known gets pregnant from her best friend after they have what appears to be boredom sex. Wow.

She decides to give the baby up for adoption and gets in cozyish with the yuppie couple who want the kid. Meanwhile, she figures out a few things about love and friendship and stuff "way beyond her maturity level" along the way.

The Lowdown:

Juno is sort of '07's Little Miss Sunshine. It's the precious little indie flick that could, in other words. Unfortunately for LMS, it has paper-thin characters, a bad script, and one of the most uncomfortably unfunny "funny scenes" in history.

Juno is a lot better. Juno is funny, for one thing, and its characters are well written and even though the script showers all kinds of love on our titular heroine, it doesn't quite absolve her of flaws. She's a bit too pretentious and cavalier, and she begins to figure it out as things happen. One of the nice touches is that there are no big "IN YOUR FACE JUNO" scenes, like there was in Buffy whenever someone got too uppity. Juno sort of quietly realizes, mostly on her own, that she does care about shit she pretends she's above. Like prom. Like Paulie Bleeker. But we don't need a tear-soaked (there are tears, though) rain scene of some kind, where Juno pregnantly yells about something. Catch and Release had a scene like that, and it was awesome, but twice in as many Jennifer Garner movies is once too many. Yeah.

Where was I? Oh yes. Juno is really funny. It's not as funny as the GREAT FUNNY of 2007 (Superbad! and Knocked Up to a lesser extent), but it's probably got more heart than either of Apatow's masterworks. In the end, that's what makes a movie like Juno work: heart. Napoleon Dynamite pisses people off because it doesn't seem to have a lot of heart, but it DOES. LMS, sadly, does not.

I should probably stop comparing Juno to other talky, cutely cool indie darlings, but it's hard not to. Juno is another example of indie-as-genre, right down to the animated intro and the quirky, lovable soundtrack.

Now while I've been sitting here sort of being overly "fair" with Juno, I'm also thinking about how it's kind of (a lot) like Ghostworld. The world needs more movies like Ghostworld. It may not need them as exposed and universally adulated as Juno, but it needs them nontheless.

And as "precious" and too-cool-for-school as the dialogue sometimes is, you can buy it. It's as good, for what it is, as the kind of stuff that Wes Anderson cooks up for his slightly off-kilter characters. Juno doesn't really have to take place in the real world, kind of like Rushmore. What's on the page is "good dialogue" even if you want to roll your eyes when it's a bit too much. I mean, we all wish we wrote shit this witty. Well, maybe you all do. I already do. Nyah nyah.

Something you didn't know: Juno is more or less a Canadian film. Cool, huh?

Best Part:

Hard to say.

Best Line:

(Delivery): Paulie Bleeker: I try really hard, actually.

(Funny)Juno MacGuff: I heard this one chick took like too many behavioral meds and she went to the mall, ripped off all her clothes, dived into the fountain and was all like "ARG I'M A KRAKKEN FROM THE SEA!"

(True): Bren: ...Doctors are sadists who like to play God and laugh at the lesser people's pain.

(Unlikely): Juno MacGuff: Either I just wet my pants... or...
Mac MacGuff: "Or"...?
Juno MacGuff: Or... THUNDERCATS ARE GO!

Attention

Thu, 10 Jan 2008 07:05:47 GMT

I think there's a major difference between people who want attention and people who will go to lengths to secure it.

I've always thought of myself as a person, like anyone else, who from time to time craves attention. I definitely can handle and like being the guy everyone in the room is listening to, when it is that I want to be. Contrary to popular belief, this isn't all the time. It's just that certain people and certain group dynamics bring this up more than others.

Anyway, I don't think I go very far for attention. I want to, sometimes. Like, probably the most obvious and churlish attention-grabbing action I regularly perform is the trademark "thought interruption". When people are talking, after patiently waiting their turn, I tend to talk over them as soon as a thought, relevance optional, pops into my head. This often gives the impression that I don't listen to people. I do, though, when it is that I let them talk.

It's a terrible habit, kind of. I don't want to apologize for it by comparing myself to people who are much more ruthless, undignified, and plain stupid in their attempts to secure that elusive positive attention. But this is my diary and I'll be a cunt if I wanna, cunt if I wanna. Ohhh yeah.

Basically I make myself feel better by thinking "well, at least I harbor no illusions about peoples' intentions toward me and the correlation between that and the attention paid to me". I also don't verbally demand attention in frankness, though I've been known to betray my true designs by verbally reacting to lack of it. I'm not attention-whore, I don't think. I mean, to some extent we all are. Attention is something people need, like plants need the sun. Some people are kind of reclusive and live without it. But like, change out sun for water and those people are just cacti.

But I do like attention. I think that I have some self-revulsion for that. I don't want to admit it, really. I want to keep it a secret so I can be better than people who do stupid shit for attention. I'm not the King of stupid shit for attention, that title belongs to like Nick Fidler or something. I am, however, a minor noble?

Maybe this is the source of my inconsistent bouts of self-consciousness. When people think of me, I don't think they really think "gee, Evan is a pretty insecure and self-conscious guy". I mean, I definitely can be and people who are particularly insightful or know me well know this and know the specific things I get insecure about. But I have weird moments where I don't care what anyone else thinks, like tonight in Jon's jeep when I gestured frantically at that chick's car. I wasn't interested in how stupid or weird I looked, just in the moment where I knew they'd remember this weird guy for the rest of their night. The attention was nice, from them, and I made my friends laugh kind of. I like that. But sometimes, I get self-conscious and even anxious and I'm not sure whether it's just certain stimulus or whether I'm fucking unstable somehow.

Eh.

Movie Diary: Charlie Wilson's War

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 02:35:56 GMT

The Players:

Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, Philip Seymour Hoffman.

The Plot:

Based on a true story. Hollywood's main lie disclaimer. Ooooo.

This movie is about Charlie Wilson, a congressman of no particular import who led the partyboy easygoing life until he heard about a little place called Afghanistan. Through circumstances, his own position, and the influence of a wealthy Texan she-wolf, Charlie finds himself invested in the fight the Afghans are making against the Soviets who have invaded them.

The Lowdown:

This is a pretty fun movie. Although the issues are kind of topical, and the movie sometimes wants to comment on current events, you'll find it more or less toothless if you don't look for the subtle bits. I don't think that the bold "yes, we are left wing" ending really counts. I heard that there was a much better ending which had to be reshot by request of some of the people the movie is about.

Anyway, this is a comedy. So it's pretty funny. I laughed out loud a few times, but mostly was entranced by the witty dialogue and amazing delivery of both Hanks and Hoffman. Their first scene together is hilarious. And Hoffman is easily the standout of this movie, like he is in most movies he's in. Fucking awesome.

This movie has a horde of quotable, awesome lines. Apparently Aaron Sorkin is a good writer or something. Funny fucking script.

The Best Line:

Charlie's Angel #1: "Well... Congressman Wilson, he has an expression. He says uhh, "You can teach them to type, but you can't teach them to grow tits."

But really, there are like a million great lines. This is just the first one I saw on IMDB which made me chuckle.

The Best Part:

Could be Gust's first meeting with Charlie, or it could be his crazed ranting at his boss. The latter scene includes this gem:

"My loyalty? For twenty four years people have been trying to kill me! People who know how. And do you think thats because I'm the son of a Greek soda pop maker, or because I'm an American spy. Go fuck youself, you fucking child!"

And yes, I just used the awesomeness of this script as an excuse to post TWO quotes. Go me.

Last Night I...

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 01:18:20 GMT

...got pretty drunk and felt depressed. I have to stop doing that, sort of. My depressions are really no one else's fault but I kind of expect people to drop whatever they're doing and SAVE ME from my own misery. It's a lot to ask. In movies, people do it for each other all the time. But life isn't a movie.

What finally made me feel better?

Well, I had a long talk with James. Focusing on his problems helped me let go of mine. Talking to Dave about trivial things like comic books and movies was also a good boost, gave me enough juice to cheer up at all. I talked to Ryan about philosophy a bit. We talked about determinism and judgement and he reminded me of things I've thought about before, things we talked about. I tried to talk to him about our waning friendship but let it go because it was depressing.

Finally, I played Chrono Trigger into the wee hours of the morning. What could be a better cure for depression than vintage videogames that made your life seem awesome when you were a sprat?

Sometimes, I get down on people who get overly nostalgic and wallow in it too much. I happily wallowed this morning and most of today.

I'm still really worried about everything. I just don't want to think about it right now because I can't summon up the juice for it.

Movie Diary: Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 01:06:35 GMT

The Players:

Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Alan Rickman, Timothy Spall, Sacha Baron Cohen.

The Plot:

Benjamin Barker, a barber, gets sent to prison and comes back 15 years later to get revenge. A judge orchestrated his downfall, for love of his wife, and claimed his daughter when his wife went missing.

Barker calls himself Sweeney Todd and opens up a barber shop above the pie hut of a creepy widow. Together, they orchestrate the deaths of many and turn them into pies, thereby setting up a profitable business in alignment with the tenets of capitalism.

The Lowdown:

Sweeney Todd is a hard movie to like. Its characters are irredeemable, pretty much every single one. The few characters, Antony and Johanna for instance, which are meant to be more sympathetic and pure in comparison to the vileness and corruption of their older counterparts are actually more annoying than anything else. Because of this failure in casting better young actors/singers as the two minor leads, Burton's very confident and mature epic suffers a lot.

That said, there's a lot to like. Taken in pieces, Sweeney Todd has many moments of true greatness from the overwhelming and downright frightening orchestral music to the gleeful gore of Todd's many murders.

Unfortunately, it reaches high and comes up short. As a horror movie, Sweeney Todd is not scary in the slightest and as a musical it fails to impress only because none of the actors have a lot of depth and gravity as vocalists. A lot of people would disagree with this, because they'll love Johnny Depp doing anything. But while the man can carry a tune, he lacks any forcefulness or scope in his singing. He's in like company on that score. Because the score is so powerful and great, you want the actors to bust out and compete with it for menace and sheer volume, but they can't and it is to the detriment of the film. Especially since there's so goddamn much singing.

Sweeney Todd does, however, work as a dark comedy. And this is to the point, since it's meant to be more that than anything else. 1/3 isn't amazing, but it's better than 0/3 and you can tell that Burton wanted to have fun with the evil and murder rather than make it too horrifying. It's just too bad about the songs, kind of. But again, a lot of people will say he got 3/3. Those people don't watch real horror movies, I suspect, and they are certainly more willing to forgive the disparity between the score and the singing than I am. I may even concede that, because complaining about the vocals might be nitpicking anyway.

The look of the film is expert. Burton's stylish depiction of a grim and disgusting London is pitch-perfect for this movie. This is the kind of thing Burton thrives on and Sweeney Todd is a pretty impressive example of his singular, unique vision.

On a deeper level, Sweeney Todd seems to want to make some commentary about the gulf between rich and poor of London during this period. Turpin represents the upper crust, who dominate the lives of "smaller" people like Benjamin Barker was, and like Mrs. Lovett and the people of Fleet Street are. If the intent was to make Sweeney Todd into some kind of twisted champion for the proletariats, Burton dropped it somewhere. The precious little indication of this theme that is here can be stretched, I imagine, but I think that they ought to have done something with it in relation to the specific men Todd kills rather than sort of hinting at it for a while and then mostly dropping it, refocusing instead on the personal vendetta against Judge Turpin, the duplicity of Mrs. Lovett, and the lengths a man goes for bloody sweet satisfaction.

The Best Line:

Judge Turpin: You gandered at my ward, Johanna. You gandered at her. YES, sir, you gandered!

The Best Part:

Murder montage? Turpin's death? All the best parts in this movie are not for the faint of heart.

Movie Diary: Wristcutters: A Love Story

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 00:49:30 GMT

The Players:

Patrick Fugit, Shannyn Sossamon, Shea Whigham, Tom Waits, Will Arnett, and Leslie Bibb.

The Plot:

A young man kills himself and finds that the afterlife, for suicides, is a drearier version of the world of the living except that you can't smile. And like, you bear the mark of your passing, so if you shot yourself in the head and died that way, you'll still have disgusting visible wounds.

He soon makes friends with a Russian guy who was a rocker and goes through the afterlife like your older brother Bill. Our young man, named Zia, enlists the help of Eugene the Russian to go find his girlfriend, Desiree, who has also killed herself at this point.

On the way, they meet Mikal, a young woman who insists she OD'd by accident and doesn't belong in the afterlife. She misses living and is looking for the "people in charge" to correct their mistake. They take her with them, since she needs a lift, and they become sort of like a dysfunctional family.

Eventually, they find their way to Neller, a dude who runs a small camp for suicides which is kind of like a commune of some kind. Through Neller, they all sort of figure out what is most important in life... er unlife. I'm lame.

The Lowdown:

This is a pretty good movie. It reminds me of other understated, quirky romances like Garden State or Elizabethtown. Because it has an interesting and well-realized background conceit, it also has an element which neither of those other two films have: mystery.

If you can't get into Zia and Mikal's burgeoning romance, or Eugene's awesome music, you can definitely get into the world it's all happening in. They can't smile? There are no stars? Who are these people in charge? This stuff is there to sort of supplement the core story of Zia's contentment and lack thereof. He thinks he's fine, but why would he want to find Desiree so badly if he were? And what of his attraction for Mikal? You sort of ride along with the guy as he figures out that life is worth living after all. It's uplifting.

It's very effective at setting its oddball tone, the parameters of the afterlife such as they are, and the simple, yet relatable personalities and motivations of its main characters. Because it effortlessly balances all its disparate qualities, and never loses itself in one element or another (which tends to happen with movies with too many feet in too many ponds), Wristcutters comes off as immensely well made not to mention immensely likable. It's one of the most likable movies I've seen in a while. It doesn't demand much from you, as many of the "great films" of 2007 have, which is a good thing when it works for the movie in question. With Wristcutters, it does. You can sort of float on it, like a match flying upward.

Anyway, another thing I didn't really mention is that it's also pretty funny. Some people will see the humor, which revolves around death and the inherent absurdity of killing yourself, much less ideas about purgatory and the banality of hell, as insensitive and grating. They will get haughty and pissed off. Fuck them. Wristcutters just wants to toy with a few ideas without grappling them too seriously, so that it can spin a good yarn about two young people, one of which is enough reason for the other to be alive again just to follow.

To some, it might come a bit too easily or conveniently for Zia to accept life=awesome because the right woman just happens to roll along. But don't look at it that way, anonymous "some"!. Think of it instead as not about life or living, but about love. How hard of a stretch is it to realize that the love is what's important to Zia and he's willing to risk being depressed in the world of the living if it means he can be with the person he loves.

You can't see the final shot and not see that, can you?

The Best Line:

Zia: "I'm not going out tonight. It just makes me depressed."
Eugene: "So, what you gonna do? Kill yourself?"

The Best Part:

Eugene's ridiculous, deadpan song which they play a few times. At one point, they are driving and singing along, and you think they should be smiling and having a good time but they aren't smiling. You feel like maybe their being zombie-like a little. But you soon realize that they ARE having a good time, and how sucky it is that they can't smile.

A smile means a lot. There are many scenes which subtly remind you that there's no smiling in the hell of suicide, and that it's sorely missed. And the movie only explicitly mentions it once.

You can find the song, called Through the Roof N Underground, here:

http://myspace.com/wristcutterssoundtrack

To me it's hilarious and awesome. I will have it.

Youtube For Thee

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 21:08:24 GMT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GY3Fvh3STSo

I missed you, Newgrounds

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 20:52:18 GMT

This will make you feel better about your life:

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/417612

Enjoy.

Movie Diary: The Golden Compass

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 07:35:01 GMT

The Players:

Well. Dakota Blue-Richards plays Lyra. Will we ever see her in a movie again? Probably. Will we ever see her in a Pullman adaptation again? Probably not.

There're also Eva Green, Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig, Sam fucking Elliot, and the voices of Ian McKellan and Ian McShane.

The Plot:

This flick takes place in a fantasy world where our souls exist on the outside as animal spirits (which, when we're children, can change at their will... only to solidify into one form when we reach adulthood).

In this world, a little girl named Lyra is destined to do some crazy shit involving God and a totalitarian church called The Magisterium. The movie barely hints at this stuff, instead focusing on Lyra's adventures around the world as she tries to rescue a friend who church officials have captured for diabolic experiments.

The Lowdown:

The Golden Compass has no balls. Pullman's books go some pretty wonky places with Christianity. Hell, it goes some wonky places with a few of its characters. Anything is better than this mess, though.

Let's start with Lyra herself. In the book she's sassy, badass, and disobediant. In the movie, she's these things but watered down (you're going to notice fucking everything is watered down in this movie). She is also played by a little girl who is about to grow boobs, bleed from her vagine, and grow hair all over. She will simply be too old to play Lyra ever again. It's like they knew they'd never have a hope in Haplak of making The Subtle Knife. The fuckers.

Next let's go to stupid changes. Now, I'm one to accept the liberties people take when adapting existing properties. I'm a huge fan of the LotR movies, in spite of the breadth and depth of retooling that was done to the books for the sake of the movies. The Golden Compass changes don't add anything, however. They do make the story easier to follow... for four year olds. They reduce every character to an exposition-spouting automaton, they reduce all conflicts to the barest simplicity of good and bad. They fucking change Iofur's name to Ragnar for NO REASON. They drop the ending of the book, one of the all-time great endings for a fantasy book, and replace it with a baloon ride. I kid you not.

The Golden Compass is not worth your money. It is not worth your time. It is not worth your piss if it were on fire. If it has descendants, they must share the same scorn. By Cromm.

Fuck this movie. Fuck it in its stupid Hollywood ass.

FYI: A lot of people think this will get a sequel. But it probably won't. It cost 300 mil approx to make, bombed, and sucks. DVD will be a factor, but I highly doubt New Line will resurrect yet another attempt to make their LOTR lightning strike twice.

So they are making The Hobbit. If that's the legacy of The Golden Compass I guess I can be happier that it got made. However, it's a bitch for fans of the books that they'll probably never see them done justice. And if it does happen, it'll be years from now and by the same assholes who fucked up Part One.

Movie Diary: The Mist

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 07:25:01 GMT

The Players:

Thomas Jane, Marcia Gay Harden, Laurie Holden, Andre Braugher.

The Plot:

In a New England town, a bunch of locals have to hole up in a grocery store as a strange thick mist spreads from across a nearby lake.

Soon, they realize that this mist harbors strange, hostile animals. As more people die and no one knows what to do, people begin to give in to their primal instincts and some of the baser behaviors we humans are capable of.

Otherwise, there's Mrs. Carmody to preach Armageddon. And as bad as things get, her crazy-ass evangelism just seems better and better to the beleagured townsfolk.

The Lowdown:

Did I say Bug was the best horror movie of 2007? Well, The Mist would claim that title if it weren't a lot fucking more than a horror movie. It rises above pale genre to launch into an angry, hard hitting social commentary about religiosity, despair, and mass hysteria. It holds up a mirror and says something like what War of the Worlds '05 managed to briefly cry: "This is what you look like when the chips are down. How do you like it!?"

All of the characters feel like real people. They almost seem too real. The movie is shot with that "you're there" handheld style, putting you in the middle of hushed conversations, close calls with freakish monsters, and right in the faces of every person experiencing these things. Thomas Jane leads the pack in a return to actual acting (see Stander, not The fucking Punisher). But this is Marcia Gay Harden's movie. She takes Stephen King's cooky, over the top character and brings her to a place where you see her and think about 4 million fundamentalist, Evangelical Christians living just in America. What are they like when the shit hits the fan? Darabont wants you to think about this. This isn't quite a political movie, but it wants you thinking about this type of person. And it wants you to get angry about them.

One dodgy aspect of The Mist is the CG. Sometimes it holds up really well, but other times you know you're watching a movie that was shot for 20 mil. That said, it's nothing too terrible and if you've sat through I Am Legend you might actually be impressed. Not that there are CG people, I guess.

By far the most important part of the movie is its incredible ending. The Mist is the reason why I Am Legend fails so miserably. The situation is almost in reverse, as the book versions of either film are the opposite (or close enough) in tone of their adaptations. King is hopeful and positive at the end of The Mist, while Matheson is fucking with you in the darkest way in I Am Legend. The interesting thing about mixing it up in adapting them is that I Am Legend feels so wrong, while The Mist feels so right.

Holy fuck, what an ending.

I'm not kidding when I stack this up against some of the big prestige films of this year. The Mist deserves it for having balls, style, substance, and straight beating the odds of just being another good, not great King movie via Frank Darabont.

Movie Diary: Hitman

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 07:13:11 GMT

The Players:

Timothy Olyphant, Dougray Scott, Olga Kurylenko (!!!).

The Plot:

Agent 47 is set up and has to kill his way to safety with a waifish Russian prostitute in tow.

It's a lot like The Transporter, oddly enough.

The Lowdown:

Remember how I compared this to The Transporter? Yes, well, it's actually like a low-rent version of that movie. That sounds odd. Hitman has all the ingredients to be awesome. But it's just too convinced of its own coolness to be all that cool. Case in point: the dumbfuck uniforms worn by various Russian tactical forces. What the fuck were they thinking!?

Hitman has some good moments, and I definitely liked it better when I first saw it. I thought it had a good sense of humor, it stuck to the game in a couple of spots (the best spots) and has made something of a discovery in Olga Kurylenko.

She's about the best thing to be said about this movie. She's hot, funny, has energy and style... Maybe I gush too much, but it just seems to me that there's too much vacant-eyed me-tooness in today's action heroines. It's like they make the Megan Fox's and Jessica Alba's of the world in some kind of lab. Olga Kurylenko is better than those bitches. I hope to see her in more shit.

The Best Exchange:

Agent 47: "Because that suitcase holds perfectly my blazer sniper rifle, two .45s and a gag for talkative, irritating little girls like yourself. Do you want me to stop and get it out?"
Nika Boronina: "I don't know - Do you think we have time for foreplay?"

The Best Part:

Olga Kurylenko. Yes she's probably a well-written character, as far as her dialogue goes, but her delivery and playfulness don't come with the script.

Plus, she gets naked.

Movie Diary: No Country For Old Men

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 07:06:43 GMT

The Players:

Josh Brolin, Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Kelly MacDonald, and Woody Harrelson.

The Plot:

A retired welder, who's been in 'Nam, finds a satchel of money in West Texas... circa 1980. The satchel is recovered from an utter bloodbath of a drug deal gone wrong. Holy fuck.

Anyway. Llewelyn Moss takes the money but ends up on the run from people who want it as much as he does, and have the violent dispositions to coax it from him.

Meanwhile, a Texas sheriff approaching his elder days skirts the edge of these events and makes his observations about the state of the world, his place in it, and just what the fuck it means to be an officer of law in such a place and time.

The Lowdown:

A lot of people are ranking No Country for Old Men as the number one movie of the year. I can find no fault with that. It's a truly amazing movie, and marks a recovery for the Coen Brothers who have seemed a bit slipshod the last couple of years.

In No Country, their trademark ease with regional dialects, punchy and rhythmic dialogue, and interestingly mundane characters is back in full force. Added this time, they have Anton Chigurh, a monster of a man who may be the best villain in any serious movie I can think of. And I mean that. He's absolutely menacing. Not because he's pure evil, or nuts, and he is those things, but because he's a believer and what he believes in may actually be the truth about the world. That belief guides his doings, informs what others (and me) see as madness and depravity of conscience. The performance to remember for 2007 is going to be this one, Casey Affleck be damned.

Beyond Chigurh and the amazing skills of the Brothers Coen, there is a full cast of interesting people played by actors at the absolute peak of their ability. Tommy Lee Jones wowed me back in '05 with Three Burials, but this almost eclipses that with seemingly no effort. He's just awesome. Brolin, MacDonald, and even Harrelson are also not to be missed. 2007 is really sort of the Year of Brolin. But it's the year of so much fucking else, and several other actors to boot, that it hardly bears mentioning.

You must see this movie. It may not quite be my favorite movie of the year, but I think it's definitely one of the best. That said, in a year of such quality... you start to have to count favorites ahead of the curve if only because every fucking film on your radar is pure gold.

While not quite the King of Bleak in terms of endings and whatnot, No Country is a movie which is about darkness and despair on every level. It's one of the most disheartening movies I've ever seen.

People who complain about a certain character's lack of fulfillment are idiots who are missing the forest for the trees. I know a few people who have criticized the scene in question (my regard for this film is high, that's why I'm not spoiling it). Fuck them!

The Best Part:

The brief but brutal chase scene in and around the hotel about halfway through.

The Best Line:

So many to choose from. Let's go with this one:

Anton Chigurh: If the rule you followed brought you to this, what good is the rule?

That line IS Anton Chigurh. And No Country For Old Men is so very bleak only because it supports that line and the darkness of the man who states it. Anton Chigurh, in this film, is only a reflection of the world and what it does to people who aren't mean and savage and deadly enough to survive it.

Movie Diary: Lions for Lambs

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 06:52:32 GMT

The Players:

Robert Redford, Meryl Streep, Tom Cruise, Michael Pena, Derek Luke.

The Plot:

Follows a senator, journalist, professor and his errant student, and two of his former students who end up soldiers. All deal with different aspects of the foreign policy/ideological climate of the USA.

This movie skews liberal, telling us shit we already know about the invalidity of the War O' Terror and how it's been "mismanaged". It also takes time to comment on the severity of the events that are happening around us, our apathy toward them, etc etc.

It's pandering.

The Lowdown:

Like I said, pandering. Lions for Lambs features some decent performances. The big standout is Tom Cruise who is pretty fucking great as a slimey, smooth-talking Republican superstar. You get a sense that this is what Cruise would really be like if he had chosen the same kind of life as his character. He owns the role, though I imagine some people might say he just plays it like Cruise the Politician. This may be true. Fuck you.

Anyway. It's not as if this is a bad movie. However, it's very talky about a subject that has a built in swell of agreement. It's not telling us anything we didn't already know. I imagine, though, that 3 or 4 years ago, this would have been a very controversial and very momentous film. Now it just feels late to the table, preaching to the choir. Cuz seriously, do you imagine anyone who thinks the other way is going to see this? And if so, do you imagine that they care?

Lions for Lambs has been called, by other critics both professional and otherwise, one of the biggest wastes of talent in 2007. It's dismissed as being a lot like Crash 2005. I wouldn't go that far, but it's not a movie "you need to see". It's got no teeth.

Dave, however, liked it more than I did. Maybe he'll have something to add to this "review" via comment box.

Movie Diary: Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 06:44:10 GMT

The Players:

Ethan Hawke, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Albert Finney, and Marisa Tomei.

Guest-starring Tomei's naked 43 year old (and still a fucking dish) self.

The Plot:

This movie is about a couple of losers who need money. They aren't losers in that their poor, needy, or get bad fortune in life. Instead, they're losers because they make stupid choices, are selfish, and easily corrupted by the concept of an easy dollar. No matter what the cost to them.

The plot jerks you around a bit, jumping backwards and forwards in time and sticking to one character's POV per sequence. This is a device that works for the movie, where it could easily have worked against it.

Anyway, I should actually mention the plot now. Basically, two brothers decide to rob their parents' small jewelry shop in order to make some easy money. Both think no one will get hurt, and both need the money for different reasons. One has a bitch ex-wife and a kid to pay for, the other has drug problems and a burning desire to shake himself out of the funk he's in.

When they actually perform this amoral deed, they are rewarded by a series of clusterfucks which cause both of them to be embroiled deeper and deeper into bad, bad news. They drag their father down with them, no less.

The Lowdown:

2007 has been a year of bleak movies. Two flicks I saw before this one, but will write about later, are also incredibly bleak by the end. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead is a dark movie. It doesn't want you to sympathize with these assholes, except maybe the father. Instead, it wants to show you how fucked up things get when you make one bad choice after another, when you choose to hurt people you care about to help yourself. Besides, the movie says, you only end up hurting those people too.

I'm almost getting tired of saying it (not really) but this is yet another landmark film for performances. Ethan Hawke has never been better, Albert Finney steals the movie, and Philip Seymour Hoffman just does his fucking thing. It's glorious. Even Tomei, playing a bit dumb, keeps up with the boys as Hoffman's character's jaded, numb wife. Who happens to fuck his brother. So yes. Great performances to be had. The acting is sublime, and almost snuck by me as this is not a movie I rushed out to see.

Somewhat of a Greek Tragedy, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead will make you feel just a little worse about human nature. It'll confirm your suspicions about the destructive consequences of greed. It'll show you terrible flaws in otherwise normal human beings which revolve around this greed, and by extension these consequences.

The Best Part:

The ending had me shitting my pants. Couldn't fucking believe it. There's a lot of build up before Mr. Hanson actually deals with his errant son, but I never really predicted what exactly it was that he was going to do. Right up until he unplugged the heart monitor, I had no idea whether he'd forgive Andy or fucking finish him.

Unreal.

Movie Diary: American Gangster

Thu, 03 Jan 2008 08:20:14 GMT

The Players:

Russel Crowe, Denzel Washington, Josh Brolin, Carla Gugino, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Armand Assante, Cuba Gooding Jr, even fucking RZA is in this.

The Plot:

A sleazy, womanizing cop goes through tough shit and a long investigation into the drug trade of New Jersey. Meanwhile, Frank Lucas, an African-American who bypasses the Mafia and goes into business for himself rises with his family to become the most important drug kingpin in NYC.

The movie focuses on their lives, their motivations, and their families. It gives us a portrait of these two men, how they are alike and how they are different.

The Lowdown:

American Gangster is great. It's a great movie about American crime, and even a great cop movie. However, it thinks its great and wants to be this generation's Godfather. It is not this.

Being a Ridley Scott movie, AG is amazing looking and filled with great actors doing some of the best work of their careers. It's also got a stunning sense of place and time, making you feel like you're really in this period and breathing in the noxious sewer air of New Jersey.

AG's greatest achievement is its deconstruction of the genre to which it belongs. This is not about the glamor and allure of the criminal life, but it is about how that attitude is tied in to the notion of the "American Dream". This isn't Scarface. This is the anti-Scarface. And yet, kids are going to misread that last shot and think Frank Lucas is about to come out again. Then he'll be canonized into the SUPERGANGSTA pantheon alongside Tony Montana and other, better examples.

It fails, however, in being very exciting about its subject matter. It feels epic and has nerve and energy sometimes, but then loses this affectation in favor of subtler stuff. A better balance struck between these naturally opposed approaches would have made for a better, more engaging experience I think. What's here is great, taken apart and examined in stages, but is less amazing as a whole than many of the other great movies released this year. That said, in 2006 AG probably would have made my Top 15.

The Best Part:

The raid. There are a lot of memorable scenes, but this is the kind of shit we needed more of. I'm not asking for Bad Boys 3, here. I just wanted a bit more clashing, a bit more of a tangible stake, in Roberts' hunt for Lucas. I guess I'm spoiled by movies like Heat. Who knows?

Movie Diary: Gone Baby Gone

Thu, 03 Jan 2008 08:10:44 GMT

The Players:

Casey Affleck, Michelle Monaghan, Amy Ryan, Ed Harris, Morgan Freeman, and Amy Madigan.

The Plot:

A kid goes missing and two South Boston detectives are hired by relatives to find her. The neighborhood, cops, and Boston itself are all fucked up over it and everyone seems to have a stake in what's happening.

Patrick Kenzie and (to a lesser extent) his partner/wife Angie Gennaro turn over rocks, break down doors, and talk to some of the scariest fucking CHUDs in America in order to figure out what happened to the little girl.

And when they do, no one's ready for it. Lives are fucking shattered, harsh moral decisions are made, and who knows what's right and what's wrong.

The Lowdown:

Gone Baby Gone is fucking awesome. Ben Affleck co-wrote and directed it. Who knew?

This movie has a great depiction of South Boston, an area I know nothing about. Why then do I know it's great? Because its raw. Not everyone you see is an obvious SoCal extra. Most of them are ugly fucking steelworkers and their wives. Or something. Affleck's decision to include real residents of the city was one of many strokes of genius when conceptualizing this movie. It makes you feel there, somehow.

And the actors, being actors, sometimes stand out just a bit. But this is to be expected. Morgan Freeman can't be anything other than what he is, after all. That said, Casey Affleck and Michelle Monaghan are what's important here and they both feel right at home in this environment. Affleck, a Boston native, is particularly true to his surroundings and delivers one of the two knockout performances of his year and his career. And when, when have you seen Ed Harris this fucking aflame? He's goddamn magnificent and maybe my favorite performance in the movie. And that's saying a lot. Also, get used to seeing Amy Ryan in shit. I hope she wins every award she's nominated for.

The greatest thing about this movie is that it draws from a heavy, ambiguous moral subtext. Patrick Kenzie makes a series of decisions, affected and informed by the decisions of those around him. Most of them are moral decisions, the kind that you might have nightmares about for the rest of your life. And the great thing is that the movie never clearly puts itself on either side, instead putting it on Kenzie to take responsibility for the choices he makes even if they are the wrong ones. You're left arguing with yourself and anyone who's seen this movie about what you'd do. Most people like movies with ideas, which you talk about afterward. But there are few contemporary movies that get you talking about ethics and the high price of a moral code. Watching Kenzie's code solidify itself over the course of the movie is like a dissertation on the moral evolution of any human being. It's great and it's super engaging.

I have no complaints about Gone Baby Gone. It's perfect, as far as I'm concerned.

The Best Line:

Patrick Kenzie: He lied to me. Now I can't think of one reason big enough for him to lie about that's small enough not to matter.

The Best Part:

Probably the ending, when Kenzie takes ultimate responsibility for his role in shaping the little girl's life. By choosing to be part of it.

Movie Diary: We Own the Night

Thu, 03 Jan 2008 07:58:59 GMT

The Players:

Joaquin Pheonix, Mark Wahlberg, Robert DuVall, Eva Mendes.

The Plot:

This is a story about a family of cops against the backdrop of America's harsh war on drugs in the 1980's. Not that it's a won war today or anything.

First you have Bobby who runs a nightclub for some Russians without really paying too much attention to the illicit drug trade his benefactors are involved in. Then you have Joe who is the "good son" and a cop like their daddy. Bobby is the maligned kid, the bad seed. He thinks his brother and father are hardasses and barely makes time for them in his life. He changes his name so no one in his life knows he's a cop. And so on.

But then he has to get involved because his place gets raided and Joe gets shot in the face. We follow Bobby's ascent from scared party-boy who's in over his head to hardened criminal-buster and revenge-taker.

The Lowdown:

We Own the Night is a good, not great, little movie. It has some exciting sequences, particularly a drug raid and a car chase, but is mostly a character study of Bobby. Some of his choices come a bit too easily, like he seems to become a cop almost in no time, but none seem forced or wrong or without thought. Bobby feels every bad turn he gets, and we can see that.

One weird thing, though, is the way Pheonix's weight fluctuates throughout the movie. At the end, when he's made a cop for realz, he looks like a corpse or Johnny Depp in a Tim Burton movie. It's a bit distracting. However, his performance is solid if not the best of his career. The other players turn in solid work, though nothing too amazing. Robert DuVall however, slips into his role with such ease that he seems born to it. I love when actors get better with age, like foin woin.

Also, Eva Mendes is hot.

The movie could have used a little more snap in the dialogue, and probably a little more action in order to really settle its place. This feeling isn't helped by the weird The Departed-esque marketing campaign. We Own the Night probably would have seemed better if I was expecting such a gloomy, uneven flick. Also, better villains!

The Best Part:

Probably the chase scene. The digital rain effects are great. Then again, Bobby's visit to the drug lab is great right up until he jumps out a fucking window onto a fence!

Movie Diary: The Kingdom

Thu, 03 Jan 2008 07:49:24 GMT

The Players:

Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman, Chris Cooper, and impressive newcomer Ashraf Barhom.

Jeremy Piven is also there, chewing scenery.

The Plot:

A bomber named Abu Hamza attacks an American compound in Saudi Arabia, killing an FBI agent. A determined group of fellow agents fight politics and convention in order to get themselves on the ground at the scene, which has never been allowed before.

Once there, they team up with a police colonel who is as driven to solve the crime and catch the bomber as the Americans. Unlikely friendships and alliances are formed, convention and misguided authority are challenged, bullets are inevitably exchanged.

The Lowdown:

The Kingdom is sort of a procedural and sort of a political thriller and sort of an action movie. This sounds like a recipe for disaster, because most flicks that try to dip their feet in so many rivers end up way too wet. The Kingdom, a masterstroke from up and comer Peter Berg (director and sometimes actor), manages to balance all of these elements with skill, verve, and humor.

The performances are uniformly excellent. Berg, like his mentor Michael Mann, knows how to pick a stellar cast and get great work out of them. Garner is a major standout here, given her previous work. It's possible that she's elevated only by the quality of the movie she's in, and the work of other actors, but I don't think so. She brings a hard-edged but likeable take on the tough girl among men stereotype and sails beyond it to deliver one of the best moments of crowd-pleasing violence in 2007.

I also want to mention Jamie Foxx. This guy is going to have a similar and maybe better reputation than Denzel by the time he's done. Foxx exudes cool, charisma, and focus. He easily slips into roles like Rico Tubbs in Miami Vice or Ron Fleury in The Kingdom and I find them the most enjoyable to watch. But please, Mr. Foxx... toss us a Collateral every now and then. Don't take my praise too far to heart.

And The Kingdom just happens to have one of the best daylight gunfights in the history of gunfights. The action doesn't really break out till the end of the film, but when it does you know you've been led to this catharsis by people who knew exactly that the audience needed this kind of release after so much ramped tension.

Plus, it has one of the best opening credits sequences ever. It elevates the movie by giving us enough backstory at the beginning that no one needs to resort to exposition about the history of Saudi Arabia and America. The characters in the movie are free to react to conditions that we have a basic knowledge of beforehand, without that knowledge being shoehorned into the narrative by busybody writers. It's ingenius.

The ending is also really great. But some people will find it a little cheap after we watched our heroes gun down many Arabs (even if they were murdering, terrorist Arabs). Hey, though. You have to respect that they had the balls to go there after a big, visceral gunfight. C'mon.

The only bad thing about The Kingdom is that it's so workmanlike. It has good moments, maybe even great moments. They blend into the tapestry of the movie, which has no real weak points. Some of it is just less competent than the rest of it. But any complaint, say that the final act seems to spring on you out of nowhere, or that the ending isn't earned, is minor and smacks of nitpicking. The Kingdom is a great example of how you can make a very good movie, with no real weak points. Considering that there's almost nothing to complain about, and nothing that I would personally choose to complain about, you'd think The Kingdom would have made a far greater impression. The thing is that in any other year, it would be Top 5 material easily. 2007... when will we see your like again?

The Best Line:

Adam Leavitt (Jason Bateman): "It's LEH-vitt, not Le' Vesque. I'm not a goddamn French-Canadian."

The Best Part:

The ending is awesome. The credits are awesome. But from the moment when Leavitt is pulled out of the SUV to the final lines, you are witnessing greatness.